Thanks for sharing this. I’ve started “experimenting” Toyota Kata at my company, Multunus. But I’ve some questions, and hoping that you would be able to make me understand better.

Let me try to explain with an example with what we are doing. Our target condition is to reach an average of 1 bug within 2 weeks where the current condition is an average of 3-4 bugs.

– My assumption is that, the Improvement Kata is for the entire team rather than individuals in the team. Is that correct?
– What is your recommended timeframe for each experiments i.e. multiple steps that we come up with for achieving the target condition?
– Going back to the reducing the bugs example that I explained above, there can be multiple things that we can do i.e. improving our test coverage, better exploratory testing of the app, fixing the issues with collecting requirements etc. Is it suggested to have just one next step that the entire team working on or can it be multiple?

Hi Leena,
The Improvement Kata can be used both with teams as with individuals.
The typical timeframes that I have seen working in the product development context has been:

1-3 Months for Target Conditions

0.5-7 days for each PDCA cycle of an experiments. The shorter the better.

The main focus of Improvement Kata/Coaching Kata is learning. The amount of concurrent experiments should be evaluated based on that criteria. If you can learn the cause and effect when you run concurrent experiments that would be ok. If not, then try to do one at a time. You can run a few experiments to see what works best in your context.

Remember that the Improvement Kata/Coaching Kata should focus on you way of working and not so much on achieving a specific outcome.

Avoid using averages in your process metrics and Target Conditions. Averages are not leading indicators that you can act on as it happens.
Try to use the accepted range of for your process metrics and Target Conditions. Absolut values and ranges can be leading indicators that you can act upon when it happens.

Thank you Håkan for your answers. Especially your mention about averages was really useful. I will come back with more questions, if I have any. Please share your email if you prefer the communication in that way.